Sportsline

Byron Buxton is out for the Twins. ...

Will Abrams continue his great history against Griffin Canning?

Robbie Ray has allowed his opponents a .931 OPS on the road this season. …

Spencer Miles has been an opener or bulk guy, but now getting a starter's shot. ...

Yoshinobu Yamamoto takes his .183 opponent’s batting average against the Phillies. …

The Braves are 23-9 on the road. ...

Shane McClanahan has been lights out for the Rays. ...

Carolina enjoys a three-day break before Game 1…

For a second consecutive night the LA Dodgers are slight home favorites. The Philadelphia Phillies after a road sweep against the Padres, did lose game one to the Dodgers. A catalyst in their turn around has been their excellence on the road, as they have not lost two in a row on the road since April 24th. This coincides with Jesus Luzardo who has won four of five road starts this year, with a 1.21 road era. Back the Phillies.

After starting off the series with 24 and 17 rebounds in the first two games, Spurs big man Victor Wembanyama has been held to 4, 8, 6, and 10 rebounds over the last four games. The Thunder are forcing him away from the rim, and even with two horrible shooting games by OKC, Wemby still hasn't had more than 10 boards. On the assist side, he's had one game with over 3 assists over the same four games, with three total in Games 5 and 6.

We have been riding this trend all series. In the postseason, the team that lost the previous game and is then favored in the next game has a 21-7-1 record in winning the first quarter. In the Spurs-Thunder series, the previous game loser is 5-0-1 in winning the first quarter of the next game. After getting punched early in Game 6, this is a spot for OKC to come out fast in Game 7 at home and set the tone.

A little counterintuitive to fade the MVP in the most important game of the season, but Shai Gilgeous-Alexander hasn’t looked comfortable all series, and I don’t see him breaking out offensively in Game 7. SGA has not cleared this line in the Western Conference Finals, and is under in nine of his last 11 games dating back to the Suns series. The Spurs defense has taken him out of his element - normally a 50% shooter on pull-up jumpers, SGA is at 41% in this series. And he’s passing out his drives at a 10% higher rate. The Spurs are comfortable with him facilitating, so I’m leaving assists out. Game 7s infrequently lend to struggling star’s best performances - I’m on the under.

Finding some value on the Yankees -1.5 here. JT Ginn actually has been solid, and his underlying metrics are trending in the same positive direction, but he also has just a 15.5 outs line, with favor to the under. If he's not sticking around in this game longer than five innings, that would stress an already overworked A's bullpen that hasn't performed well, after Severino pitched just one inning yesterday. Ginn has struggled when allowing multiple walks too, which likely contributes to the low outs projection and is not a recipe for success vs. this lineup. New York has a much stronger/well-rested bullpen, solid starter, and offense that's been clicking with the addition of Jose Caballero, so I'll back them to outlast the A's.

FanDuel. This is why the Thunder keep Alex Caruso’s minutes at bay during the regular season - to unleash him for these exact moments. Caruso is 5/5 to the over on this points line in the playoffs with 24+ minutes, and four of those games came in this series. Everything about this situation screams big minutes for Caruso who played 32 minutes in last season’s Game 7 in the Finals. No Jalen Williams or Ajay Mitchell means there will continue to be more shots to go around, and the Spurs will continue to leave him open behind the arc.

Carlos Rodon has yet to strike a batter out tonight against this same A's lineup but starting to look at projections for tomorrow and this price on the 6th strikeout makes for some good value. Ryan Weathers has pitched into the 6th inning or further in 8/10 starts since the beginning of April, and with another projected workload into the 6th inning here, around 17 outs, he's popping up around 6.5 Ks. This year when he's exceeded this line, he's gone for 7+ Ks in each start, so I'm also taking 7 and 8 at plus odds.